[Jürgen Hubert]

OK, if you are one of my players - stop reading now.








I'm currently participating in a campaign set in a fairly standard fantasy setting (the German setting Midgard, for those who happen to be familiar with it). And while I am a player so far, I want to take my turn at GMing at some point.

What complicates coming up with adventures for this group is that the PCs are powerful - at the moment, they are at 512 character point. To give just one example, one of the characters has IQ 17 and Magical Aptitude 20, which means she can maintain spells with an energy cost of up to 7 indefinitely, and usually maintains a dozen spells every time she goes out of the house. Missile Shield definitely is one of them, and she usually casts it for all other members of the group who can't cast it themselves, and often Hawk Flight as well.

And other characters have no shortage of over-the-top abilities either, including quite a few Cosmic Modular abilities. In other words, it is rather challenging to come up with appropriate threats for these characters. And I do not want to use some sort of "power nullifier", since arbitrarily taking away the player characters' powers is boring and tends to hit characters to an unequal degree.

Fortunately, the world is known to exist within a wider multiverse, so I plan to use an "interdimensional invasion" storyline. And I am going to model the main bad guys after the inhabitants of Apocolyps from DC comics (especially the DC Animated Version, since I am the most familiar with it) - a hellish world with godlike rulers who are attempting to conquer other worlds. First they infiltrate them by finding local allies/patsies (like Intergang) and use them to weaken/evaluate opposition. From their their activities gradually escalate until a full-blown invasion starts.

As the first layer of opponents would be the local equivalent of Intergang, I need to come up with some appropriate gear for that world to distribute. This gear should look and feel bizarre to the relatively primitive locals as it was made on a more advanced world - yet it should not feel like "boomsticks" or simple equivalent of modern-day technology. It should feel not like ordinary tech, but magitech - a hybrid that won't be confused for either.

I've already come up with "ammunition" or a power source for this gear. These items are powered by small crystal sphere... which are actually repositories for the Soul Jar spell. This is a reason why the enemy world is constantly trying to collect new captives - so that their souls can power their industries and their wars of conquest. And as long as the item is used, the power of the soul in question is gradually sucked out until nothing is left. Hopefully, this will reduce the temptation for the PCs to use this gear for themselves...


So, what kind of suggestion do you have for such gear? It should be a real threat to characters from a TL3 fantasy world - overpowering most ordinary folks and even endangering 500 CP characters with lots of magical defenses. But it should not be an "instant win" button for those who use it, either. And it should be as flavorful as the Apocoliptic tech from the various animated shows is.